Arctic Monkeys – Lipstick Vogue (Elvis Costello cover)

Arctic Monkeys got a lot of attention covering the Strokes last week (especially because on his new album, Alex Turner sings: “I just want to be one of the Strokes”). But I preferred their wonderfully sleazy “Lipstick Vogue” cover, played in honor of Costello as he recovered from cancer surgery. Turner’s a product of his influences; in addition to the Strokes and Elvis, he appears to have his Nick Cave snake slither down cold.Continue reading »

Sun Kil Moon’s Mark Kozelek has recorded full-album tributes to both AC/DC and Modest Mouse, so suffice to say, his choice of cover songs is wide-ranging. But his latest may be the most unpredictable yet: “Come on Get Happy,” the theme from the cornball 1970s sitcom The Partridge Family.Continue reading »

They are, not coincidentally, the songs that changed the most from the originals. David Bowie was constantly reinventing his sound, so it seems wrong to cover his songs too faithfully.Continue reading »

It’s hard to keep up. At Canada’s Juno Music Awards this week, Feist performed a beautiful trio cover of “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye” – though releasing one of his best-ever albums right before his death actually is a pretty good way to say goodbye. Watch the clip below, introduced by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Cohen was a pallbearer at Trudeau’s father’s funeral).Continue reading »

Earlier this summer, Nick Cave’s 15-year old son tragically died after a fall. To pay tribute, Mark Kozelek of Sun Kil Moon has begun putting a cover of Cave’s “The Weeping Song” into his set. In context, the song’s lyrics – a conversation between a father and son about how miserable life is – are even more brutal than they were already.Continue reading »